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Tuesday, December 13, 2011

DIY: Shimmering Paper Star Tree Topper

Since I made everything for my tree, I decided that I needed to make the tree topper as well. This was fairly simple to make once I got the technique down and learned how to hold my hot glue gun without gluing me.

This is a very time consuming project so patience is mandatory! Find your zen! Also, you will have glitter EVERYWHERE. There is just no getting around that.

First you'll need to CAREFULLY cut the 3D star in half. I found that a combination of scissors & knife work well.

Ta-da! Now you have to halves! Or a front & a back. This is important in case your tree is one that can be viewed from all sides, or if you mess up on one side.

Now you are going to coat a small edge in the modge podge. You can use glue as well, but I already had the mod podge out so I used that instead. I like to keep things as easy as possible.

Once you have the mod podge/glue around the edge, put some glitter on it! Now, this is your tree topper so you can decide how you want your star to look. I had 6 glitters that all kind of matched each other. So I decided to fade from dark to light. you can do your star in 1 color, or 4 colors, or whatever you want.

Keep going until your star is filled. Then set it aside and let it dry and tackle the other half!

This is why you do both halves. My star on the left turned out much better. So I had a choice as to which will be the front. I like having options.

Now, while your stars are drying, you need to make some cones. You'll take the piece of paper and roll it up into a cone shape and glue the seam with your hot glue gun. You'll need to play around for a little bit to figure out what size cone you like best for the outside portion of the star. Roll a few different sizes up and hold them up to the stars to see which you like best. I ended up using about 3/4 of a dictionary page for the outside layer.

Once your cones are made and your stars are dry, you can start the gluing process. You'll start by gluing a cone to each point on the inside of the star.

Then you'll glue a cone to the sides of each cone that is already there.

Once that is done you need to make & attach the cone that allows this to stand on your tree. Take two pieces of dictionary pages and glue the corners together with a dot of hot glue. Then roll up into a cone shape and glue. Trim the bottom (the opening) so the edges are somewhat even. now to make it more sturdy coat the inside of the opening with some hot glue. (I apologize that there are no pictures of this process, but it was impossible to hold a camera and do this.)

Now take the star you decided to be your front & glue a wad of paper inside. This will wake it easier to attach later.

Now while the front star is drying, you're going to make smaller cones, about 1/2 the size of the large cones and glue them in the same manner to the center to help fill in all that open space. And keep going around until all your spaces are filled in.

Then glue your front star on. At this point you might notice some gaps. Just put some more small cones in those gaps & glue in place.